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النشر الإلكتروني

XI.

"The pavilion is a bright and charming spot; Rádhá and Hari are in glistening attire and the full-orbed autumnal moon is resplendent in the heaven. The dark-hued swain and nymph of golden sheen, as they toy together, shew like the lightning's flash and sombre cloud. In saffron vesture he and she in scarlet; their affection deep beyond compare; and the air, cool, soft and laden with perfumes. Their couch is made of leaves and blossoms and he woos her in dulcet tones, while coyly the fair one repulses his every advance. Love tortures Mohan's soul, as he touches her bosom, or waist-band, or wreath, and timorously she cries off off.' Pleasant is the sporting of the glorious lord, close-locked in oft-repeated embrace, and like an earth-reviving river is the flood of his passion.

XII. "Come Rádhá, you knowing one, your paragon of lovers has started a dance on the bank of the Jamuna's stream. Bevies of damsels are dancing in all the abandonment of delight; the joyous pipe gives forth. a stirring sound. Near the Bansi-bat, a sweetly pretty spot, where the spicy air breathes with delicious softness, where the half-opened jasmine fills the world with overpowering fragrance, beneath the clear radiance of the autumnal full moon, the milkmaids with raptured eyes are gazing on your glorious lord, all beautiful from head to foot, quick to remove love's every pain. Put your arms about his neck, fair dame, pride of the world, and lapped in the bosom of the Ocean of delight, disport yourself with Syám in his blooming bower."

If ever the language of the brothel was borrowed for temple use it has been so here. But, strange to say, the Gosáins, who accept as their Gospel these nauseous ravings of a morbid imagination, are for the most part highly respectable married men, who contrast rather favourably both in sobriety of life and intellectual acquirements with the professors of rival sects that are based on more reputable authorities. Several of them have a good knowledge of literary Hindi: but their proficiency in Sanskrit is not very high: the best informed among them being unable to resolve into its constituent elements and explain the not very recondite compound sudurúha, which will be found in the second stanza of the Rádhá-sudhá.

To indicate the fervour of his passionate love for his divine mistress, Hari Vans assumed the title of Hit Ji and is popularly better known by this name than by the one which he received from his parents. His most famous disciple was Vyás Ji of Orchha, of whom various legends are reported. On his first visit to the Swámi he found him busy cooking, but at once propounded some knotty theological problem. The sage without any hesitation solved the difficulty, but first threw away the whole of the food he had prepared, with the remark that no man could attend properly to two things at once. Vyás was so struck by this procedure that he then and there enrolled himself as his disciple, and in a short space of time conceived

[graphic]

THE CHHATTHI PÁLNÁ, AT MAHÁBAN,

(From a Photograph.)

such an affection for Brindaban that he was most reluctant to leave it, even to return to his wife and children. At last, however, he forced himself to go, but had not been with them long before he determined that they should themselves disown him, and accordingly he one day in their presence took and eat some food from a Bhangi's hand. After this act of social excommunication he was allowed to return to Brindaban, where he spent the remainder of his life and where his samádh, or tomb, is still to be seen.

Another disciple, Dhruva Dás, was a voluminous writer and composed as many as 42 poems, of which the following is a list: 1, Jív-dasá; 2, Baidgyán; 3, Man-siksha; 4, Brindaban-sat; 5, Bhakt-námávali; 6, Brihadbáman Purán; 7, Khyál Hulás; 8, Siddhánt Bichár; 9, Príti-chovani ; 10, Anandashtak; 11, Bhajanáshtak; 12, Bhajan-kundaliya; 13, Bhajan-sat; 14, Sringár-sat; 15, Man-sringár; 16, Hit-sringár; 17, Sabha-mandal; 18, Ras-muktávali; 19, Ras-hirávali; 20, Ras-ratnávali; 21, Premávali; 22, Sri Priyá Jí kí námávali; 23, Rahasya-manjari; 24, Sukhmanjari; 25, Rati-manjari; 26, Neh-manjari; 27, Ban-bihár; 28, Ras-bihár; 29, Ranghulás; 30, Rang-bihár; 31, Rang-binod; 32, Anand-dasa; 33, Rahasyalatá; 34, Anand-latá; 35, Anurág-latá; 36, Prem-latá; 37, Ras-anand; 38, Jugal-dhyán; 39, Nirtya-bilás; 40, Dán-líla; 41, Mán-líla; 42, Braj-líla.

Other poems by different members of the same sect are the Sevak-báni and the Ballabh-rasik ki báni; the Guru-pratáp, by Dámodar Dás; the Hari-nám-mahimá, by Dámodar Swámi; the Sri Rúp Lál Ji ka ashtáka, by Hit Ballabh; and the Hari-nám-beli, the Sri Lal Ji badhai and the Sri Lárili Jú ki badhai by Brindaban Dás.

2. The Chhatthi Pálná, or Assi Khamba, at Mahában:

The description of this building given in my Mathurá Memoir, Part I, page 149, is not very accurate. The pillars of the colonnade are mostly, if not all, anterior in date to Máhmúd of Ghazní, and probably belonged to a temple, or it may be to several different temples of the Jaini faith, which he destroyed when he captured the fort in the year 1017. After they had been lying about for centuries, the Muhammadans in the reign of Aurangzíb roughly put them together and set them up on the site of a modern Hindu temple that they had demolished. The building so constructed was used as a mosque till quite recent times, and its connection with Krishna, or his worship even, at any earlier period is entirely fictitious. That is to say, so far as concerns the actual fabric and the materials of which it is constructed: the site, as in so many other similar cases, has probably been associated with Hindu worship from very remote antiquity. In Sir John Strachey's time I obtained a grant of Rs. 1000 for the repair of the buil ding, which had fallen into a very ruinous condition, and in digging the

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foundations of the new screen-walls (the old walls had been simply set on the ground without any foundation at all) I came upon a number of remains of the true Hindu temple, dating apparently from about the year 1500 A. D. The Iconoclast would not use these sculptures in the construction of his mosque, since they had too recently formed part of an idolatrous shrine, but had them buried out of sight; while he had no scruple about utilizing the old Jaini pillars. Whatever I dug up, I either let into the wall or brought over to Mathurá for the local Museum, which in all probability will now never be instituted.

On a drum of one of the pillars is an inscription, which I read Rámdasa kas iknavi kam, meaning, it would seem, 'Column No. 91, the gift of Rám Dás.' This is now upside down and from this fact as also from what has been said above, it may clearly be seen that my statement in the 'Memoir' that 'the pillars, as they now stand, occupy their original position' cannot be maintained. I still think, however, that in the main they represent the original design and that height was gained, from the first, by the simple expedient of placing one pillar on the top of another. For some of the inner columns are so carved, that they seem to be broken in two in the middle, though they are really each a single shaft.

3. The Hindu sikhara; its origin and development.

If Mr. Fergusson had ever been able to visit Brindaban or to procure photographs of the temples there, it is possible that he would not have found the origin of the Hindu sikhara such an inscrutable mystery as he declares it to be. He conjectures that the external form may have been simply a constructural necessity resulting from the employment internally of a very tall pointed horizontal arch, like that of the Treasury at Mycena. But so far as my experience extends, no such arch was ever used in a Hindu temple. On the contrary the cella, over which the sikhara is built, is separated from the more public part of the building by a solid wall pierced only by a doorway small enough to be easily closed; while the chamber itself is of no great height and is covered in with a vaulted cieling, as to the shape of which nothing could be learnt from a view of the sikhara outside. And vice versa. Thus at the great temple of Gobind Deva the central dome of the nave (or porch as Mr. Fergusson very inappropriately calls it) is perfect; but it is impossible to determine from thence with any certainty what would have been the outline and proportions of the tower that the architect proposed to raise over it. I have no question in my own mind that the origin of the sikhara is to be found in the Buddhist stúpa of which a representative example may be seen in Plate XIII sculptured at the back of a small pillar. Nor do I detect any violent breal in the

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